Blogger 365 Day 229 - First up

     So I am sitting here waiting, just one hour until my first fantasy football draft of the fall.  This is not the league I am worried about, this is just a league with 10 random players that all are signed up on Yahoo.  I am only doing this league for two reasons; 1) I got an additional 25 Swagbucks for signing up for it and 2) I will treat this almost like a mock draft for the league I am actually interested in, one that will involve two coworkers, because few things in life are as much fun as being able to talk fantasy football smack at work. 

      Admittedly I didn't do much predraft work heading into this, I watched bits and pieces of a couple preseason games and checked out a couple of different online listings to see where players were getting taken in other online drafts, but that really was about it.  As a result I doubt I will spend much time breaking down how this draft went or why I selected such and such player at any given point.  As of right now I do not even know what the draft order will be.  If I had a choice, I would like to be somewhere in the 4th to 6th pick range, but Yahoo randomly determines draft order, not me.

     I did get out of the house a bit today.  Yesterday Esam called me, he is the owner of the store formerly known as Gus Miller's.  First he called me to place a cigarette order for Monday, but after I had gotten his order written down he asked if I could stop out when I was done.  I didn't get done on Saturday until after 9pm, so stopping out was a little further down my list of things to do then actually getting home and making something to eat.  Instead I decided to stop in this afternoon, he just wanted to give me a little money for helping with the ordering, he usually throws me like $15 a week for doing three cigarette orders for him.  It's not much but it s actually more than any of the other people who I help with their orders do, so I am not complaining.

     Since I had to go out I figured I might as well spend some of my ill gotten loot from the casino Friday night.  I need a new pair of shoes, the ones I got in April are still okay, but the inside sole in the left shoe is no longer attached.  I can put it back in place before I wear them but by the end of the day it has slid around under my foot to the point where it is almost coming out the heel of my shoe.  The plan was then, go to see Esam, then walk across Forbes Avenue and catch a bus to The Waterfront and revisit DSW Shoe Warehouse.

     I was sitting at the bus stop, I had my choice of catching either a 61 C or 61 D bus, but over the course of better than a half hour I saw a 61 A , 61 B, 67 and 83, but none of the buses I wanted.  Being sick of waiting I decided that I would walk up to Fifth Avenue instead and catch a bus into town and see if they had anything at Burlington Coat Factory.   I might not find anything, it's a coat factory not a doctor Jim, but unlike waiting one of two buses, I could catch 9 different buses into town, and downtown is closer than the Waterfront anyway, a 10 minute bus ride versus a half hour.  Plus getting back from either place is just as problematic, one bus for the Waterfront versus 8 for downtown, so downtown just seem to make more sense from a time perspective.

     I get to the bus stop thinking I shouldn't have to wait nearly as long, but is still ended up being another 15 to minutes before a bus caame.  Except one bus didn't come, there were three in a row, all going the same way into town.  Common sense would dictate that if they were all going to the same place from the same stop, you might stagger their arrival times so people wouldn't wait as long and not have three buses arrive at the same stop at the same time, but then public transportation is government subsidized work, so any measure of expected common sense should probably be done away with.

     I did get into town, the bus stop is right across the street from Burlington, so I went up the escalator, third floor - mens wear and all that jazz, started pawing through their selection of shoes until I found something that was affordable and looked decent (I never try shoes on in the store, or any clothes for that matter) and decided to walk around and see what else they had.  By the time I left I had two pairs of shorts, two shirts, three pairs of socks, 3 pairs of boxer shorts and a pair of shoes all for $83.  Had I went to DSW, I would not have gotten nearly that much, in part because their shoes would have been more expensive and in part because it is a shoe warehouse, not a shirt, socks, shorts, underwear and shoes warehouse. 

     Look at that, I am down to 20 minutes until draft time.  I think after the draft I will bake a pie.  I still have the pumpkin pie in my freezer I bought from Scratch N Dent a couple of weeks ago, I might as well fire up the oven and actually make it.

     I haven't done one f my breakfasts in a couple of weeks.  I was up early enough today but I think we already knew what the special would be at Pamela's, blueberry pancakes.  That special is like a shitty song on American Top 40 that just won't go away.  We get it, you have blueberries.  Enough already.  Plus with more kids moving on campus, even if I had a desire for blueberry pancakes (I didn't), the restaurant would have been packed with kids and their parents dropping them off for the coming semester.  If I am going by myself, I like to have an element of peice and quiet during my morning breakfasts and that would no have been the case today.

     Time to open the online drafting lobby window and get ready for the football festivities.  Sing it with me kids, "Let's all go to the lobby....."





     Got the lobby window open, looks like I am picking 9th out of 10 teams.  And yes I went all 1957 with that concession stand reference above.  Some one had to do it, might as well be me.

     Three minutes until draft time and 7 out of 10 teams are on autodraft.  I hate autodraft simply because it takes way too much time.  I don't need the computer spending 2 minutes to tell me it is going to take the highest player on the pre-ranked board. 

And so it begins

1) Peyton Manning QB DEN
2) Brandon Marshall WR CHI
3) Ryan Matthews RB SD
4) Julius Thomas TE DEN
5) Rashad Jennings RB NYG
6) T.Y. Hilton WR IND
7) Bishop Sankey RB TEN
8) Golden Tate WR DET
9) Anquan Boldin WR SF
10) Andre Williams RB NYG
11) Emmanuel Sanders WR DEN
12) Ben Roethlisberger QB PGH
13) Buffalo DEF
14) Mark Ingram RB NO
15) Robbie Gould K CHI

     Now to go see if any of the guys I picked are already hurt or cut by their teams.  Yay, they are all still on rosters, that's good I guess.  Not sure I like it very much, but like I said, I really didn't care, it was more practice than anything else. 

     With that done, I guess it is time to go bake some pie.  Toodles.